Wednesday, 14 September 2011

Ron Paul's Health Care Plan

Ron
Paul is an unusual human being. He actually has quite a bit in common
with Barack Obama in my opnion (hear me out): both men tend to serve
as symbolic ciphers onto which extremely loyal followers, looking for
a man of ideological purity and political benevloence, project their
hopes. You can see this phenomenon in Obama's continued support in
some sectors of the left that should, by all rights, be taking what
the President has to say with a grain of salt considering the amount
of money he has taken from Wall Street and the composition of his
cabinet in terms of hunchbacked, black-hooded capitalist necromancers.

Paul
has the same "reality problems" with libertarians. Many economic libertarians
(or classical liberals, or whatever they want to be called) love
Paul's hard line stances on a variety of issues. From the gold
standard – I used to play a drinking game in political discussions
with libertarians where I would take a shot when the term “fiat
currency” was floated – to the PATRIOT Act, bless him for that –
to FEMA, the EPA, the DOE, and other agencies he would like to
eliminate – Paul seems to be a freedom lover's wet dream. Then you
look a little closer and see that he has brought home pork aplenty to
his district, that he opposes reproductive liberty for women, and
that he is, in essence, kind of a kook.

Now,
it's easy for liberal bloggers (and also for whatever the hell kind
of blogger I am) to take shots at Paul, because he says controversial
things, and sometimes he actually means them, and that is interesting
and can make other conservative figures look weird by association.
That's not a fair way to play the game, and I try to reserve that
type of look-at-the-freak dogpiling for those who truly deserve it,
like Michele Bachmann or Glenn Beck.

Paul
has crossed the line this year, though. He hasn't become a
laughingstock; he has become a dangerous cult figure who now acts
like exactly that; a new David Duke without the overt racism (although his mysterious and "accidental" connections to racist literature have always been fishy) but
with a new, thinly-veiled threat of political violence; a particular
kind of political violence.

There
are consequence through action, but are also much less-often publicized, less well-understood consequences that are tied to inaction. Seth
Abramovitch, with Gawker media, writes:

Should
the state pay [an indigent person's] bills? Paul responded, "That's what freedom is
all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to
take care of everybody—" He
never quite finished that point, letting the audience's loud applause
finish it for him. So Wolf Blitzer pressed on, asking if he meant that
"society should just let him die," which earned a chilling
round of approving hoots from the crowd. Paul would not concede that
much outright, instead responding with a personal anecdote, the
upshot being that in such a case, it was up to churches to care for
the dying young man. So basically, yeah. He'd let him die. As it turns out, Paul was not speaking purely in hypotheticals. Back in
2008, Kent Snyder — Paul's former campaign chairman — died of
complications from pneumonia. Like the man in Blitzer's example, the
49-year-old Snyder (pictured) was relatively young and seemingly
healthy when the illness struck.

He was also uninsured. When he died
on June 26, 2008, two weeks after Paul withdrew his first bid for the
presidency, his hospital costs amounted to $400,000. The bill was
handed to Snyder's surviving mother (pictured,
left), who was incapable of paying. Friends launched a website to
solicit donations.

The
Gawker article (give it a read) goes on at great length about how
Snyder is the reason Paul got into the race back then, and was the
wind beneath his wings &c. Any way you look at it, it was a
tragedy.

It
was a tragedy that should have taught Ron Paul a blunt-force lesson
about reality and ideology.If
your close friend and former campaign manager dies young and leaves
piles of medical debt behind, and you continue to hammer health care
as an individual responsibility that anyone can pay for, you are
either lying to yourself, or your mind is so warped by political
ideology that you literally cannot see a reality that does not conform
to your worldview even when it slaps your familiy friend's grieving mother with a
half a million US Dollars in unpayable debt. "Welcome to the new economy," as they say.

Either
way, Ron Paul, who didn't stand much of a chance of taking the
nomination in the first place, is done, but I suppose the main point
here isn't that piece of old news.

2 comments:

"A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I’m not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I’m healthy, I don’t need it."

This made up guy CHOSE not to get insurance, even though it would have been affordable. Being the strapping young guy he is, he most likely opted for a convertible and lake house in a gated community.

Why should the government stop at paying for this guys medical bills, why don't they pay for his mortgage that he overextended himself on too. Or better yet, why doesn't the government just trade his mortgage in for one half the size?

Meanwhile on the other side of town, I'm paying for my health insurance, paying my mortgage on my affordable townhouse, and driving around in my beat up Honda. Can I bend over a little more to make it any easier?

Anonymous - in difficult economic times, it's a fair question why the industrious ant should help the lazy grasshopper who fiddled all summer long while the ant was buying gold and, I don't know, T-Bills? I gently poke fun with the analogy, but it is a valid point. Individual responsibility is important. It's what, in some lucky cases, can become the engine of greatness, and over the last year or two, especially when it comes to small business, I have had my eyes opened to the fact that there are onerous government regulations and ridiculous rules, overreactions to litigation and the like, that, if eliminated, would no longer choke the growth of local business.

That said, it sounds like your understanding of our government rests solely on negative liberties (i.e. "freedoms from") rather than positive liberties (i.e. "freedoms to"). If you immediately see that latter category and think of them as a scam or some kind of handout, you need to realize that positive liberties are as important to our republic as negative liberties (where I agree with you most). For example: there is no right to vote in the Constitution. Go ahead, point to the right to vote. Well, isn't your attempt to exercise these so-called "freedoms" at the polls a usurpation of limited Constitutional government?

I don't say that as a trick, I say it to suggest that our country needs a sensible balance between negative liberty (freedom from tyranny, freedom to bear arms, etc.) and positive liberties (the right to vote, civic participation, etc.).

Another way to understand health care is to understand the scientific - and yes, it is scientific and not ideological - consensus about vaccines. Vaccines only work when everyone participates - if people "opt out," epidemics can happen. In a similar way, insurance only works in an "everybody in" approach. In such an approach, the costs and benefits are distributed evenly enough - and in a fashion regulated to make sure no fraud and/or cheating is going on - that everyone's health care is lowered.

I don't understand opposition to current Health Care Reform, because it in no way stifles private enterprise - if anything, it's a huge giveaway to pharmaceutical companies and insurance giants. That said, it will get "everyone in," and bend the cost curve eventually. If your concerns are that your insurance premium will go up, switch companies - for people who are so gung ho about private competition (and I admit that in some cases I also think competition benefits consumers), opponents of Health Care Reform seem to forget that there *is no* public option, only private companies, just like before.

Thank you for you comment (I'm serious) - I love feedback. If you ever want to continue the discussion on this or any other topic, please leave a comment (and feel free to sign it or not), or e-mail me at charles.r.bernard@gmail.com.